• Bug#1076939: dpkg-dev: no longer resolves variable DEB_VERSION_UPSTREAM

    From Jonas Smedegaard@1:229/2 to All on Wed Jul 24 14:20:01 2024
    XPost: linux.debian.bugs.dist
    From: [email protected]

    Package: dpkg-dev
    Version: 1.22.8
    Severity: important

    Dear Maintainer,

    It looks like recent changes to dpkg-dev affects a bunch of packages
    that I maintain.

    Concretely, the package radicale now fails to build, as it passes an
    empty version number to help2man. This was reported as bug#1076915.
    Seemingly related bug#1076568 made me try downgrade dpkg-dev, and
    indeed with dpkg-dev 1.22.6 the variable DEB_VERSION_UPSTREAM_REVISION
    again resolves correctly.

    It looks like recent dpkg-dev offers variable expansion only inside
    make rules, not for make code declares "at the core", outside of make
    rules.

    Many of the packages I maintain rely on the ability to resolve variables
    also at the core of the makefile. I am not furiously against changing my packaging patterns, but I imagine I am not the only one, so I guess such
    change needs more care and documentation (or perhaps just pointing me to
    the elaborate documentation that I have totally missed).

    Kind regards,

    - Jonas

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